Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is the most common form of genetic heart disease worldwide. Researchers have estimated that up to 1 in 200 people have the condition, which is characterized by an abnormal thickening of the walls of the heart. This thickening can make it difficult for the heart to pump blood.
Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy can be a deadly disease, and there was a khbrknews when it was largely untreatable. But the last 20 years have witnessed a sea change in the condition’s management—a change that has led to an estimated 10-fold decrease in deaths.
“Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy has this reputation that it’s difficult to live with, and that the outlook is grim,” says Dr. Barry Maron, a cardiologist and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy specialist at Beth Israel Lahey Health in Burlington, Mass. “That used to be true, but there have been huge advances in clinical care and clinical research, and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is now characterized very differently.”
“The reality,” he adds, “is that very few people die of the disease, and fully half of patients belong in a group we consider benign and stable.”
Here, Maron and other experts describe what it’s like to live with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. They explain the different stages or forms of the disease, how and why it progresses, and how treatment may evolve over khbrknews. They also talk about the outlook for people who are diagnosed with the condition.
An unpredictable disease
Some medical conditions—certain forms of cancer, for example—are characterized by different stages. Those stages help determine treatment, and they also reflect a patient’s prognosis.
Experts say hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is different; it doesn’t play by such tidy rules. “It’s an incredibly heterogeneous disease, and the more we learn about it, the more complex it gets,” says Dr. Christopher Kramer, distinguished professor and chief of cardiovascular medicine at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. The…
